


Heroes and Hells and Bottomless Wells

by dizzy



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy





	Heroes and Hells and Bottomless Wells

Daniel Jackson is dying.

In just a few hours, Daniel's going to die and there's nothing Sam can do. She's not a medical doctor, and even if she were there still wouldn't be anything she could do. He's going to die and all she can do is sit here and watch through a big glass window.

No one knows that they've been seeing each other for three months. They've decided to be discreet out of concern for how the SGC would handle two of its front line team members fraternizing, despite Daniel's status as a civilian.

Sam's losing a lover and she can't tell anyone. She sits beside him and holds his hand, lets her forehead drop to the edge of the bed. She knows other people want a turn, that they want to say goodbye, but she won't leave until they make her.

He doesn't say much, just looks at her with those intense blue eyes. She feels like he's trying to cram the rest of their lives into one gaze and it's so bright it burns her.

She leans over and brushes her lips against his cheek, finding a place not yet affected by the radiation. "I love you," she whispers.

It's the first time she's ever said it to him.

After he ascends, she feels a bone-deep kind of relief that he is at the very least alive somewhere, on some plane of existence. That relief does little to comfort her the first night she spends in bed alone, though.

She toys with the idea of trying to invent some sort of device to bring him back, but as smart as she is she's no match for the Ancients. They've tapped into something metaphysical, something bordering on spiritual that her scientific brain can't even begin to comprehend. So she grieves for him. She cries and she hugs her pillow and she sleeps in a t-shirt that he left behind in his haste to leave for the mountain one morning. She calls her best non-military friend and for the first time, says out loud to someone else that the man she was in love with is dead. She tells her friend everything she can possibly remember about the man that Daniel Jackson was. She spends a whole weekend in with a box of kleenex and a collection of his mission videos that she swiped from his lab.

And the following week when SG-1 is called back into active duty, she locks those emotions away and does her job.

A year later, Daniel Jackson is alive and well and sitting just a thick metal door away from where Sam stands.

She's had a whole year to get over having her heart broken. She's not really sure if she wants that to happen again. When he asked her before if they were together, she lied. She was on a mission, they were off-world, and she was thrown by the question. She's had a knot in her stomach since then wondering if she did the right thing.

The Colonel seems to think he'll remember things eventually. She's not so sure. She hopes, but doesn't want to hope too hard.

A year is a really long time.

She straightens her shoulders and steps forward to knock on the door.

When she steps inside, she can tell in an instant that he really is remembering.

She loses her composure, not all at once but like an eggshell cracking. It splinters and before she can stop it she has tears in her eyes.

"Don't, don't cry." He says, putting down the framed picture of Sha're in his hand and moving toward her. His arms around her feels so right and so wrong and so exhilarating. She turns her face toward his and he kisses her, one hand on the back of her head to keep her there. "Don't cry, Sam. I'm sorry I didn't remember before."

She pulls away and wipes her eyes. "But you do remember now?"

"Not everything." He says, and he looks so _tired_. Whatever conversation she'd thought she needed to have for her own sake, she knows that for his will have to wait. That's okay, though, because she's already gotten more than she expected when she decided to come see him. "I can tell there are things missing. But I remember some things."

He sits back down on the bed and picks up the picture again. He looks heartbroken staring down at his dead wife and Sam feels something like jealousy and remorse at that, but she can't really hold it against him. Especially not since Sha're is gone and Sam is here, still with Daniel.

She reaches out and runs her fingers through his hair. He smiles, dimly, and looks up at her. Her fingertips come to rest against his temple, and then he captures her hand with his. "It'll just take some time."

"That's fine." She smiles wiping another tear away with her free hand. "I'm not going anywhere. We've got all the time in the world."


End file.
